Is There a Historical Overview of Hydrogen Production Methods?

Hydrogen gas has a wide range of applications, and its importance in modern industry is astonishing. Various industries such as petrochemicals, fine chemicals, metallurgy, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, food, electricity, and nuclear power require hydrogen gas.

Methods of hydrogen production have been known since before World War II, but large-scale applications of hydrogen came later. Water electrolysis, a method to produce hydrogen, has a history of over 200 years.

In 1915, steam methane reforming was successfully conducted in laboratories, and in 1928, it was industrialized by Standard Oil Company in the United States.

Germany developed the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis in 1933, using coal to produce oil. After World War II, methods like steam methane reforming, crude oil or naphtha steam reforming replaced coal-based hydrogen production.

In the 1950s, the UK's ICI company developed light oil steam reforming, which was industrialized in 1959.

In the 1980s, with the development of methanol and synthetic ammonia industries, methanol and liquid ammonia became readily available and inexpensive. This led to the emergence of technologies such as methanol decomposition and ammonia decomposition for hydrogen production.

Additionally, new technologies like solar, bioenergy, nuclear energy-based hydrogen production, and hydrogen production via hydrogen sulfide are still in the research and development stage. Various hydrogen-rich gases in refineries are purified and separated using methods like Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) and membrane separation to produce hydrogen gas.

Currently, large-scale hydrogen production in industries primarily uses hydrocarbon steam reforming and coal gasification methods. Hydrocarbon steam reforming is the most suitable process in refineries, where natural gas, various refinery gases, naphtha, and liquefied petroleum gas can be used as feedstocks.